Graphics & Sound

Look At Those Sweet, Sweet Moves

The Unreal engine might be showing its age despite the UT update, but it's still running strong after 3 years. Few existing FPS/3PS engines can match it - Evolva, Serious Sam and Quake III are the only ones that immediately come to mind as clear winners. That's pretty good for an old engine.

Stay away from that

Nya-nya-nya-nya!

Unreal has a certain clarity and lends itself very well to realistic environments. Deus Ex and Wheel of Time are perfect examples of the kind of level designs you can make with the engine. Character models are always a bit blocky and primitive but have a natural feel and flow that tends to be missing from Quake-based games (Half-Life being a notable exception.)

Seeing as you're going to be looking at least one character 99% of the time you're playing, it makes sense that a lot of time was spent animating him and his enemies. All characters in the game have a wide variety of moves - though many are shared. They walk, run, crouch and jump with natural motions. Ragnar reinforces the 'natural' feeling by being presented as a merely excellent human warrior, not a superhuman killing machine. His foes might not be natural enemies, but they do move, fight and die in ways that at least seem to obey natural laws. Well... their heads and limbs get hacked off if you do it right. Natural enough for us, at any rate!

He doesn't seem to want to die

Oh look. Jump Puzzle. Yay.

Where Am I?

The levels are spectacular. Wonderful. Amazing. The very first post-introduction level you play is stunningly beautiful and creative and it just keeps going on like that from there. You start out in the water, woken from near-death by Odin. The crewmates of your ship are dead and floating helplessly around you. Your first search is for air so you head straight up into a gorgeous, almost alien cavern. There is no way out apparently so you head back to the water to see if you can swim out. The water is deep and there are shipwrecks on the bottom and more - it's an unforgettable sight.

The levels range from these underground caverns to the hellish underworld and the surface itself. A great deal of time was obviously spent to keep the settings interesting and varied. We could only find a few areas that weren't impressive, but those were mostly gameplay related, often the kinds of areas that scream "jump puzzle". (We scream when we hear "jump puzzle" too. For the last time, PC developers, this isn't a Nintendo box and Ragnar isn't an Italian plumber.)

Your first enemies

Busted! You're gonna get tossed around punk.

Sweet Melodies

The sound effects aren't too great but they're good enough to keep up with the graphics and gameplay. At best, with on-cue creepy music or ambient sounds, they elevate the game to greatness. At worst, they're good enough to keep from taking away from the game.

The music is good, and more importantly, fits the theme perfectly. It's exactly the kind of stuff that a Viking warrior should have accompanying him on a quest. It blends in absolutely and never overwhelms you, though it could easily still be good even if it drowned out other sounds.

Sound effects, however, have a bit of a stock feeling. Not too shabby but it doesn't feel like the full effort was made here. Speech we'd like to say is "above average" but with "average" already being so good in the games we play, let's just label it like that. It's certainly better than Icewind Dale though not quite up to par with Diablo II or Baldur's Gate II.

Honestly, the screens look so much worse than they should.

Da Boss Man